Riding

As 2010 gets under way, with Christmas flab still settling, your New Year’s resolution might be to ride sportives for the first time. David Else recalls a rookie season, and offers a few words of inspiration.

It all started when I couldn't fit into a pair of trousers. Christmas and New Year had taken their toll on my waistband. My wife said I had middle-age spread. And that was enough. I dusted off my old steel bike with its 27-inch wheels, and took up road cycling again.

Keep your hands up, he’s hurtin

Keen and excited for the season ahead? Nervous about your impending form? Worry not; I have the solution, the Balboa solution. Simply follow these three steps and I will guarantee you a better season than last. No magic or potions, just a trio of easy steps and progress for any competitive cyclist will result. Measurable improvements in personal best times, stage race placings or club run sprints. 3 simple progressions.

We were riding up a steep hill on a narrow lane. It was windy and raining. The road was covered in a carpet of leaves, which made for lurching wheel-spins when standing on the pedals. Half way up the hill was a cattle grid, its metal bars as slippery as ice under the wet foliage. Crossing it without sliding off was like attempting some bizarre fairground attraction. On the other side of the grid, the hill got steeper. Riders strained on too-high gears, or gave up and walked. A handy sign on a road-side tree announced: ‘Now you know why it’s called the Exmoor Beast’. I should co-co.

I’ve got a cycling mate who defines ‘hill’ as a gradient steep enough to come off the big ring. There were 16 such hills on the Tour of the Peak last weekend, meaning a good baker’s dozen to test the legs as well as the three major headliners of Cat & Fiddle, Winnats Pass and Holme Moss. And if that wasn’t enough, torrential rain and high winds were on the menu. The result: a sportive to remember.

The New Forest 100 sportive is organised by UK Cycling Events and sponsored by Wilier – they of the rather nice Italian bikes – and while there may not be many Giro-style climbs in this part of the world, it’s definitely a great place for riding a bike.

The days are getting shorter, the leaves are turning brown. Autumn is definitely here. You may’ve hung up your racing wheels until 2010, but there’s still fun to be had on the end-of-season sportive circuit as David Else found out at Blenheim Palace.

A 30lb Commencal hardtail. Not the weapon of choice for col bagging but that's all the lady at the tourist office in Bedous could offer me, and at €10 a day I wasn't really complaining: any bike is better than no bike.

Our base for our family week in the Pyrenees, the Fontaines D'Escot, is smack bang at the bottom of the Col de Marie Blanque – the steep side – and that was to be the first challenge of the day.

Nothing – not the severity of the ascent, the driving snow and ice or my non-cycling wife, was going to stop me getting to the top. I had driven 11 hours to get to Mount Ventoux and, with all my fellow riders having dropped out, there was just me – yards from the summit but on a track that had turned from warm tarmac hundreds of feet below into a covering of snow and ice. Tom Simpson died on this mountain in 1967 and I was here to pay my respects to him. The cold was freezing my hands and the wind threatened to blow me over the side of the mountain. But I couldn’t fail now.

Mont Ventoux gallery

The Saturday of the Marmotte was possibly the most emotional day I’ve ever had on a bicycle. Packed with legendary climbing, the Marmotte is tough. Tougher than anything else I’ve done. I was a bit below par on the day due to illness, but that's by the by: this is a serious bit of riding on roads which are the stuff of dreams, and there was fellowship, pain and tears along the way.